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Freedom in the University 



OUTLINE OF AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE 

PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, UNIVERSITY 

OF CINCINNATI. JUNE 2. 1908. 



By Charles William Dahney 



Gift 

DEC 19 -i^ 



Freedom in the University 



The University stands for three things : Democracy, Truth, 
and Freedom. 

Every true university is organized on the democratic plan ; 
it holds truth as its supreme ideal and maintains freedom as the 
first condition of learning. Dr. Gladden, than whom we have no 
greater prophet of Democracy, told us today what Democracy 
had already accomplished, and gave us a splendid vision of what 
it is still to do. Dr. Philipson, the President of our Phi Beta 
Kappa, has often spoken to us of the ideals of Truth, I wish to 
speak now of the third great principle of the university, Academic 
Freedom. 

The freedom of learning, of re'search, and of teaching is the 
jealously-guarded palladium of the true university — jealously 
guarded because won through long centuries of strife. Univer- 
sities have not always been free, and all universities are not free 
today. In the early days they were in bondage to the church, 
which held in its powerful grip the soul of humanity, and sought, 
by the mandate of authority, to direct the thoughts of men. The 
classical Renaissance gave the world again the liberating influence 
of the Greek ideals of the harmonious development of the whole 
man, of body, mind and soul, in the pursuit of learning and the 
expression of beauty. Yet this partial emancipation soon yielded 
to the new tyranny of a dead scholasticism. Only in the last 
century did the conquering spirit of universal liberty finally uplift 
the fair figure of academic freedom and enthrone her in the uni- 
versity, to be forever the guardian of the rights of men — to learn 
to teach, and to live the truth. For this reason we call this disci- 
pline "the liberal education." It sets the human spirit free and 
trains it for service in life. 



The university is thus first of all the enemy of all superstition, 
whether in church, school, or legislature. The disciplines of the 
college — languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and the 
sciences — are all means to this one end, the making of the 
scholar, the seeker for and the liver of the truth. They are the 
tools with which, from that rude block of stone, the freshman, 
the college carves an image of ideal beauty, the roundly-developed 
graduate, such as we greet here tonight. 

These college tools may, of course, be often changed, and let 
us hope they may never cease to be improved. Every school 
should be an experimental laboratory in education, in which to 
make and test new tools ; but the end of the liberal education will 
ever be the free, powerful, truth-loving man, the trained thinker 
and the skilled worker for his race. 

All this is true — absolutely true — but the academic freedom 
of which I speak is opposed to anarchy as much as to superstition. 
Liberty is not license. The highest freedom is possible only in 
pursuit of truth and in obedience to law. The locomotive is not 
free when, its engineer falling asleep or its brakes failing, it runs 
away down the mountain side, hurling scores of men and women 
to destruction. Nor is a man free when his passions overthrow 
his judgment, his will no longer controls his disordered brain, 
and his mind runs riot in folly. Such a man was not liberally 
educated. His training has failed to make him love the truth 
and obey the law as the liberal education should. "Lehrfreiheit," 
academic freedom, is not license to live without law or to attack 
the foundations of society. The teacher of anarchy, whether 
economic, political, or social, has no place in the university. 

All good things in this human world of ours are liable to dis- 
tortion, and academic freedom may be abused also. We have 
our freaks and fools in the universities, as everywhere else. 
"Many foolish opinions are offered by German professors," says 
Paulsen, "which have their origin partly in the mere mania for 
contradiction and originality. Every new docent takes a pride in 
having his own system, and in setting up something new, even 
though it be false and shallow, instead of 'the old truth' of which 
Goethe once spoke. A more or less arbitrary principle is chosen, 
new paradoxical notions are deduced from it, and a system con- 
structed out of them. Then pupils are enlisted and drilled in the 



new ideas; there is no absurdity for which, if it appears in the 
form of a system, a number of pupils can not soon be found in 
Germany, who proclaim it as the newest truth, and call it the 
greatest thing of the day." Mere speculations, be they merely 
philosophical dreaming or scientific scheming, do not make one 
free. Only "the truth shall make you free." 

Teachers are, moreover, officers of society, employed and 
trusted to use these diciplines in the training of scholars and the 
discovery of truth. "How then can they be allowed to shake the 
foundations of the very institutions which it is their office and 
function to preserve?" 

The university is free only when it organizes all the forces of 
society so they work efifectively for the discovery of new knowl- 
edge, the teaching of the truth, the love of the beautiful and the 
development of morals. The teacher is free only when his best 
and fullest powers are devoted, without stint or halt, to the 
advancement and teaching of the science to which his life is 
dedicated. The student is free only when he strives faithfully 
to improve the opportunities provided for him, to the end that he 
may in time make some return to the society that bred and the 
institutions that nourished him. 

Freedom is opposed to ignorance and superstition, but it is in 
perfect harmony with law and order. It aims rather for their 
completion, their fullest fruition. Ignorance and superstition, 
misgovernment and anarchy, always and everywhere produce the 
crudest slavery. The multitudinous suns that, with their attend- 
ant company of planets, satellites, comets, and asteroids, fill the 
heavens on these brilliant nights, are free only as they obey the 
mandates of the law of gravitation. Every planet of them is free, 
but only to whirl in its appointed orbit, to fill its destined part in 
the mechanism of infinite space. Even those seeming wanderers, 
the comets, are under the control of the same great law. They 
appear to us to be erratic only because their orbits reach beyond 
our few years. A comet in our own little system is a contradic- 
tion. Your sham investigators and sensational teachers are like 
meteors, at best only stray atoms of dust in the process of burning 
up. They know not the truth, they obey not the law ; therefore, 
they blaze a moment, flash out and are gone. 



Slavery in all its forms, springs either from anarchy, the 
absence of law, or misgovemment, its abuse. Both are wicked. 
Let us forever remember that more is to be feared from anarchy 
than from tyranny; that the ideal of government is self-govern- 
ment; that the ideal of freedom is the eternal subjection of the 
human will to the authority of right. Said Goethe : 

"To this thought I hold with strong persistence, 
The last result of wisdom stamps it true : 
He only earns his freedom and existence. 
Who daily conquers self anew." 

So, in the moral universe, a man is free only when he lives in 
accordance with the laws of the universe, which are the laws of 
God. Only when in harmony with His law is he in the way of 
his highest welfare, the orbit of his ultimate destiny. The su- 
preme law of the moral universe is the law of brotherhood, the 
duty of each, not only to do justice to, but to serve lovingly, his 
fellow men. The end of scholarship is, after all, not merely the 
discovery of truth, or even the teaching of the truth, but the use 
of all truth for the advancement of the race. The end of educa- 
tion is not merely the self-realization of the individual, or even 
the self-realization of the race or the nation, but the service of all 
mankind. The ideal of the true scholar is "That Service Which 
Alone is Perfect Freedom." 



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